Tatoo mania.

Enough, already.

I don't get this tatoo craze. Don't understand it at all. Confused to the max. What in the world?

Even so, I guess, if you are going to get tatooed, well...J.J. Reddick might have an idea:

The script lettering on his stomach reads, "Isaiah 40:31," referring to this Bible verse: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

The other tattoo, on his chest, came first. It's the Japanese word for courage, and beneath it is reference to another Bible verse, Joshua 1:9. That one reads: Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Barna report on "Holiness..."

Barna is rarely encouraging. Today is no different. On holiness...

The adults most likely to say they know someone they consider to be holy are those who describe holiness primarily as possessing a positive attitude toward God and life. Adults who think of holiness as a spiritual condition are among the least likely to identify anyone they know as holy.

Thoughts on quail hunting and abortion

Someone requested this after I used it on the radio show yesterday...

The Church - now the whipping boy of the GOP?

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said, "There's $1.7 billion fraud in the food-stamp program. If the churches had done their job and followed Jesus' teachings, the government wouldn't have started all these programs and created all these problems."

Oh. So the church is to blame, now?

• First, Coburn is one member of the "churches" he talks about. The first paragraph of his Senate bio tells us he and his wife are members of Muskogee's New Community Church. He should thus frame his remarks in terms of "we" instead of "them." As in, "if we the church had done our job..."
  
  
• Churches probably don't give enough in either money or effort. But ask, for instance, who the real heroes of Katrina relief is and the suffering will tell you - it is the Church, not government.
  
  
• Churches would have a lot better chance of helping now if government hadn't created such an "entitlement" and "victimization" culture that they have. Helping the poor now with that mentality in the air is tough, as I can attest as a pastor.
  
  
• I would like to know what Coburn, as a private citizen and not a legislator, is doing to shoulder his part of the blame. And that is also a good question for each of us part of that greater Body, the Church.
  
  
• Fundamentally, I disagree with Coburn. If churches had been doing their job, government with its "Messiah" conplex would still have come smashing in to mess it up. It is never done good enough for Coburn and his crowd that more money and another layer of bureaucracy won't help. Check their latest budgets.
  
  
• And yet, I will not deny, churches need to do more. My church needs to do more. The Church Universal needs to do more. I need to do more.
  

What happened to Jesus?

Now here's a column. And your comeback is?

I thought about telling my family what's happened to Jesus in the United States — how he's been kidnapped by politicians and preachers who decide what he does and doesn't think. They speak for him, and it doesn't always make sense.

They say Jesus is "pro life," but he doesn't seem to have a problem with the death penalty. And he thinks stem cell research — something that would save lives — is no different from murdering babies. They say he's the embodiment of kindness, love, decency and compassion. But he hates gays, lesbians and Muslims. And he's not too crazy about Buddhists, Hindus and the rest. Jews? He can put up with them if he has to.

The Rev. Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka claims to speak for Jesus and goes around the country talking about how "AIDS cures fags." Pat Robertson says it would be a good idea if the United States killed the president of Venezuela. It would be a lot cheaper than starting another war.

All week I went over that stuff in my head and decided not to mention any of it to the family.

It would make America look ridiculous.

Abortion killing mainline Protestants?

Looks like it:

Conservatives have often chided the mainline Protestant denominations for their dramatic membership losses, faulting the controversial liberal political advocacy of their churches' officials. No doubt there is truth in this. Most mainline Protestants are still conservative leaning, despite the chronic leftism of their church hierarchies. Many react in frustration by leaving.

But the demographic implosion may also have other, deeper contributing factors. One out of every six Americans belonged to a mainline denomination 40 years ago. Today it is one out of every 15. Writing for The American Journal of Sociology several years ago, Catholic priest (and romance potboiler author) Andrew Greeley, with two other sociologists, asserted that mainline Protestant decline is actually created by decades of declining birthrates in comparison to those for conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Though Greeley et al. did not address it directly, mainline Protestant hierarchs long championed legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade, culminating in their founding of RCRC in 1973. Undoubtedly this had some impact on abortion rates among their own flocks. The lower birth rate among mainline Protestants can probably be explained, at least partly, by some level of increased moral ease with and resort to abortion (the "Roe Effect").

So perhaps unrestricted abortion is fueling the decline of the very same churches who have most championed it. The irony is a sad one.

— Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist committee (UMAction) of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

WorldWide Revival? What would it take?

We were talking in class just recently about the overwhelming odds that Christians faced in the early (first century) church.

Peter Wagner suggests that in the best of estimates Christians were outnumbered, after they had grown significantly, by a 1 to 30,000 ratio! And yet...

To the church at Rome Paul could write within thirty years of Pentecost: “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is proclaimed throughout the whole world” (Rom. 1:8)

And again, in the Colossians letter from prison: “The gospel…is come unto you; even as it is also in all the world bearing fruit and increasing, as it doth in you also, since the day ye heard and knew the grace of God in truth” (Col. 1:5b, 6)

Justin Martyr (100?-165?) “There is not a single race of human beings, barbarians, Greeks, or whatever name you please to call them, nomands or vagrants or herdsmen living in tents, where prayers in the name of Jesus the crucified are not offered up. Through all the members of the body is the soul spread; so are Christians throughout the cities of the world.”

Tertullian (160-230) We are but of yesterday. Yet we have filled all the places you frequent – cities, lodging houses, villages, townships, markets, the camp itself, the tribes, town councils, the palace, the senate, and the forum. All we have left you is your temples….Behold, every corner of the universe has experienced the gospel, ad the whole ends and bounds of the world are occupied with the gospel.

Lactantius (contemporary of Paul): “Nero noticed that not only at Rome but everywhere a large multitude were daily falling away from idolatry and coming over to the new religion.” (above take from Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries)

I am reminded, contemplating such data, of C.S. Lewis' thought on the power of the pure in heart.

"How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing...it is irresistible. If even ten percent of the world's population had it, would not the whole world be converted and happy before a year's end?" (Letters to an American Lady)

Hmmm

Hat tip to Ace of Spades HQ and Wuzzadem for the pic.

Best 'Toon' of the Day

Check it out. About right.

Happy Birthday to the Gipper

"The churches of America do not exist by the grace of the state; the churches of America are not mere citizens of the state. The churches of America exist apart; they have their own vantage point, their own authority. Religion is its own realm; it makes its own claims. We establish no religion in this country, nor will we ever. We command no worship. We mandate no belief. But we poison our society when we remove its theological underpinnings. We court corruption when we leave it bereft of belief." (Ronald Reagan)

Those we would change, we must first love

Another excellent column by Colson:

We're inviting people to consider a worldview that's livable, that makes sense, in which people can discover shalom and human flourishing.

This means, first, loving those we contend against in the political process. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Whom you would change, you must first love." Some Christian leaders do get this. Jerry Falwell, whatever else he has done, has gone out of his way to engage the gay community protesting against him. James Dobson set a similar example when protestors surrounded the Focus headquarters.

Second, we offer our strongest witness when we demonstrate that we do love others by fighting AIDS in Africa or the worldwide sex-trafficking trade, or by reforming prisons and prisoners, loving the most unlovable. One New York Times columnist who vehemently opposes our political efforts has nonetheless praised Christians for the work he's seen us perform around the world. When the world sees us working for human rights, we earn moral authority that blunts the "imposing your morality" attacks in the public square.

Our cultural mandate requires us to work for justice and righteousness so that God's creation reflects his majesty and goodness. That includes engaging in politics. But we must remember as we do this that we are proposing a more excellent way to a needy society, and that we do so in love, no matter how much abuse is heaped upon us.